


the reoccurring kind

by Jocondite (jocondite)



Category: Bandom, Panic At The Disco
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-01
Updated: 2008-05-01
Packaged: 2017-10-21 09:39:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/223762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jocondite/pseuds/Jocondite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryan has no practical skills, and Spencer cleans up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the reoccurring kind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marksykins (Marks)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marks/gifts).



Ryan doesn't answer the door when Spencer sounds the buzzer once, twice; three times. He doesn't answer the door when Spencer decides to try knocking the old-fashioned way, either, because it's _Ryan_ and it would be exactly like him to have an electronic doorbell that doesn't work; maybe because his power's off, or because it failed somehow and Ryan was too entranced by the metaphor of a mute doorbell which tolls for no one to do anything about it.

Which is kind of what Spencer's here to talk to him about, anyway.

Finally, he pulls out his phone and calls him.

Ryan answers on the fourth ring, sounding drowsy and confused. "Hey - uh, hello?"

"Were you asleep?" Spencer asks, and rolls his eyes when Ryan says _no_ , sounding even more confused. "Then you have no excuse for leaving me to cool my heels on your doorstep for ten minutes. Answer the door, asshole."

He folds his arms and waits, and when Ryan finally jerks the door open, Spencer levels his best steely glare at him.

Ryan just wrinkles his nose at him, by way of both greeting and rebuttal. It's kind of hard to maintain the glare with any real force with Ryan standing in the doorway, blinking dazedly into the thin sunlight and scratching at his hair, his bare legs faintly ridiculous. He's wearing an ancient pair of boxers and a tiny, shrunken pink t-shirt that's stretched taut across his shoulders and doesn't manage to cover most of his navel, and it says _sugar and spice and all things nice_ , which means that it must have been Keltie's.

Spencer sighs, and the last of the steely glare dissipates.

"Did you change the ringtone on my phone?" Ryan asks him accusingly, before he can say hi. "I wasn't expecting it to ring, and then it did and it was that can-can dancing song, you know the one, only really fucking loud." He hums it, not particularly convincingly. "It scared the shit out of me."

"You're paranoid," Spencer tells him. And he's not even in the right mood to take advantage of Ryan's paranoid phases, which can be incredibly entertaining to exploit, at the right time. (He still remembers with fondness the time he and Jon convinced Ryan that something was wrong with the shape and structure of his hands, something _weird_ , deformed, and Ryan spent the next few hours staring at his fingers and freaking out).

He has things to accomplish, though, and no time for reindeer games, however hilarious. "No, I didn't. I would have gone for something far, _far_ more of a pain in the ass if I'd been fucking around with your phone, so it was probably Brendon. Are you going to let me in, or what?"

"Oh," Ryan says, blinking. "Right." He steps aside and Spencer marches in.

There's kind of a mess, from what he can see - which is very little, because the only illumination, natural or otherwise, is provided by the weak, faltering daylight streaming through the open front door into the drear cave of Stygian black which was once Ryan's living room. The curtains muffle the windows, letting no other light enter, and Spencer guesses that the place hasn't been aired for a week; it reeks of old takeout and the pervasive smell of _nature._

"Did you try to hotbox your entire condo?" he asks, propping the door open. "Don't answer that. More importantly, when did you last eat?"

Ryan points mutely at a pizza box, and Spencer pinches the bridge of his nose.

"Okay. One issue at a time. Brendon finally called me," he says. "He says you've been coming over for showers again."

"I'm a responsible adult, Spencer," Ryan says, and folds his arms. Spencer keeps looking at him, and Ryan wriggles a little under his eyes. "I might just miss the company, you know. Maybe I'm inventing excuses for going over there as, like, a silent cry for help, or. Something. You should give me the benefit of the doubt here. That's what friends do, Spencer."

Spencer ignores this, wading carefully through the debris and tearing the curtains back. Ryan hisses when the sudden burst of sunlight hits, exaggeratedly throwing up an arm to shield his eyes and darting back into a shadowy corner, and Spencer throws a grin at him. "Yeah, yeah. When did the water get cut off, Ryan?"

"I'm a responsible adult," he repeats. "I learned my lesson on our first hiatus, I swear."

"I have nowhere to go this afternoon," Spencer tells him, and waits.

"...not all that long ago," Ryan finally offers hesitantly, into the silence. "Two weeks? The power only went off yesterday, but my phone still works, so."

"Tfthhhh," Spencer says, exhaling. He pauses to search harder for words to sum up this state of affairs, and fails to find any that will do. He gives Ryan a little space to lick his wounds, and everything goes to hell. "Who're your providers? Where's your mail?"

It takes him half an hour to get things sorted to his satisfaction at the power company, and the woman at the water company talks him in circles for nearly as long, until he pulls out the take-no-shit adamantine tone he only uses on the very worst and most deserving of journalists, and then it gets sorted out remarkably quickly.

Ryan wanders off early on, drifting down the hallway and rummaging through the kitchen cupboards, before Spencer stops taking notice of his movements in his efforts to get his point through to the bland voice at the other end of the line.

When he finally closes his phone and goes to find him, Ryan's wandered back into the living room, lying stretched-out on the carpet by the window, his eyes shut against the sunlight and a faint smile curving his mouth. His stupid little t-shirt is riding up, baring a wide swathe of flat belly and lower rib to the sun.

"Ryan?" Spencer asks softly, in case he's sleeping, since Rya has a gift for catnaps and shallow sleep, but at the question he can see Ryan's eyes move under their eggshell-thin lids.

He says "Spencer?" without opening them even the smallest crack.

"They're putting the water on tomorrow," Spencer tells him, sinking to his haunches by Ryan's side. He watches Ryan's long toes flex and card against the carpet, and the muscles shift under the skin of his stomach. "The power guy's coming out to turn the mains back on first thing in the morning, and if he doesn't come by ten, I want you to call me, and _I'll_ take care of it. Water should go on sometime tomorrow, but I wasn't able to get the rep to fix a set time."

"Thanks."

Spencer watches him for a few seconds longer, and then he sighs. "Get your stuff. You're coming back to my place tonight, and you can take a hot shower, and I'll make you dinner, or something."

Ryan's eyes peel open for that, wide and brown and faintly drowsy. "I really meant to do something about it, pretty soon. I'm sorry I'm so useless," he says, sounding sleepy and a little wistful. He pulls himself upright a bit, propping himself on his elbows. "I don't know why you keep bailing me out, sometimes."

"Fuck you," Spencer says mildly, hesitates on the edge of something else. Ryan's watching him placidly, and his last sentence is still hanging in the air, a faint curling question which Ryan shouldn't need to ask. "Because you're Ryan," he says, but Ryan just keeps looking at him, solemn and enquiring.

He doesn’t move away when Spencer cups the side of his face and traces his lip very, very gently with his thumb. Doesn’t flinch, even though Spencer's half-expecting him to. Ryan just looks down, eyes dropping, breathing through his nose. And then he looks up, into Spencer's face, and something in his eyes, no longer faraway in the least, the set of his shoulders, makes Spencer's stomach turn over.

And that's enough, further than it should ever go, but Ryan's still looking at him, and it's not at all logical but Spencer jerks his head forward, further, and brushes his lips softly against Ryan’s, light as air and utterly deliberate.

Ryan sucks in his breath at that, a sharp little hiss of sound, and Spencer realizes that he’s gone absolutely rigid, barely even breathing. He's not breathing too well himself.

"Fuck," he says, because this is colossally bad idea, and he tries to scramble back. He's still squatting by Ryan's side, and he ends up wobbling over sideways, off-balance and undignified, and having to throw out a hasty hand to steady himself. His words are clumsy, too; awkward and thick in his mouth, shaped wrong. "I - sorry. Shit, I didn’t mean. Bad idea, Ryan."

He gets his feet under him, ready, calf muscles tensing, to shoot to his feet. He's halfway in motion when Ryan’s hand shoots out and wraps around his forearm, the grip tight and almost painful. He arrests Spencer mid-spring, and tugs him back down to the floor with a sharp jerk of his wrist.

"Don't you fucking dare," he says calmly. "You know if you leave me by myself I'll set fire to my bed, or something. You can't take that risk. Also, you promised me genuine food that's, like, been _cooked,_ and I'm going to hold you to that."

"You're a total scavenger," Spencer says, feeling the corner of his mouth twitch and utterly unable to stop it.

"It's my only useful skill," Ryan agrees seriously. Spencer nods, something no longer quite as tight in his throat.

He gets to his feet properly, grinning a little, and reaches down to help Ryan up.


End file.
